Our previous post described the education pathway of Adelaide O’Laughlin, Meadville, Pennsylvania as she transferred from a teaching to a nursing career in the 1890’s. During that decade, nursing was undergoing the gradual transformation from amateur-care to a professional-care approach.
Following her graduation from Jefferson Nursing School, Adelaide continued working at Jefferson hospital. She survived an explosion which blew out the hospital windows during March 1900, which was reported within two local newspapers; The Philadelphia Bulletin and The Evening Republican (Meadville, Pennsylvania). Luckily, there were no major injuries to either patients or staff members, although Adelaide’s nursing uniform was torn to shreds.
Adelaide became a private nurse in 1904, following an invitation from Samuel Dickson. Mr. Dickson was then a retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice. She became Mrs. Dickson’s private nurse from 1904 to 1910, as Mrs. Dickson was confined to a wheelchair.
She accompanied the Dicksons’ on a number of trips across the Atlantic, as they traveled to various European countries during the decade before World War (1) was unleashed on the citizens of Europe.
During the Fall of 2019, a previous Clan post recalled the individual travel-diaries of three county Clare brothers; Bryan Fergus, Donogh and Terence OLoghlin as they crossed the Atlantic on their pathway to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin (Fall 1849).
Five decades later, Adelaide wrote in great detail about her European trips, while moving in the opposite direction to the three brothers of 1849; traveling on ships of the Red Star Line. She recalled her adventures in a series of letters to her USA friends, and in particular to her sister, Mary at Meadville, Pennsylvania.
‘Dear Mary, I mailed you a second letter yesterday at Bremen, where we left on the 11.30 train in the morning – getting here at 7 o’clock in the evening, and are registered among the Royalty’ e.g. the Duchess of Bedford’ – Postcard from Adelaide to her sister, Mary dated August 6th 1905 (Bremen, Germany).
Fortunately, those letters have survived, detailing Adelaide’s adventures and experiences through European cities from Antwerp to Zagreb.
Those family-letters now form a series of twelve volumes, which are bound in burgundy-red with her name attached in gold leaf, at the base of each bound volume;
A. B. O’Laughlin – Adelaide Bridget O’Laughlin
Adelaide lived on into her seventies, passing away in the mid 1930’s.
Compiler – Daniel O’Laughlin, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U. S. A.
Acknowledge – Jefferson College of Nursing.
Clan Ólochlainn 